Dungeon Dalliance Read online

  Dungeon Dalliance

  A GameLit Harem Serial

  Charles Andrews

  Contents

  1. Combat

  2. Run Away

  3. Crystalia

  4. Dungeon Entrance

  5. Crystalfiend

  6. Dungeon Run

  7. Sardines

  8. Boss Fight

  9. Healers Suck

  10. Delving Deeper

  11. Boss Fight?

  12. Captive Goddess

  13. Load Bearing Boss

  14. Player vs Player

  15. Skedaddle

  Thanks for reading!

  Dungeon Dalliance

  A GameLit Harem Adventure

  Crystalia Online 2

  By Charles Andrews

  Copyright 2018 Charles Andrews

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  First digital edition electronically published by Charles Andrews November 2018

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  Created with Vellum

  1

  Combat

  “I’d like to go on the record as saying I don’t like this at all!” Keli screamed.

  She was in the process of running from a massive boar that was about the size of a small elephant. It was almost amusing watching her running through the underbrush, amusing and intriguing considering the way her dress clung to her in all the right places, but I had work to do.

  I was well aware of just how little fun it was having a boar running after you trying to shove its tusks up your ass. I’d learned that one the hard fucking way my first time logging into the game.

  “Stunning now!” I shouted, letting off a psionic blast.

  The boar paused for a moment. I took the opportunity to hit it with a mez as well, though the thing didn’t fall over dramatically and start snoring like the other boars did when I hit them with a mez. No, it stood there until the stun wore off, then it fell over.

  “I think we could easily take this creature,” Sefia said, hitting it with a critical eye.

  “Thanks for the assist,” Keli said, coming up to me and distracting me, yet again, with the hypnotic way her chest rose and fell.

  Her robes didn’t leave much to the imagination, is what I was getting at. Not that I had a problem with her robes not leaving much to the imagination.

  “Sefia here thinks we can take on the bacon factory here,” I said, nodding at the boar. “What do you think?”

  Keli looked the thing up and down. Then her eyes went unfocused, which I figured meant she was in the process of checking out the thing’s stats. I did the same thing, doing a quick inspect.

  Only when I inspected the thing I couldn’t see its level. Its name, Pig God+, was a deep violet that meant it was high enough above our level that the game was telling us “maybe you shouldn’t bother with this one right now.”

  Pig God+

  Level: ???

  Hit points: ???

  There’s enough pork bellies in that bad boy to flood the market for years to come!

  “I agree,” Treanna said. “This foe looks like it’s beyond any of you.”

  “Thanks Gandalf,” I muttered.

  “Hey. You’re the one whose subconscious is feeding me these lines, so watch it,” she shot back at me.

  “I’m not so sure,” I muttered.

  Sure there was a good chance this thing could kick our asses. The problem with that calculus was there were always monsters like this that were just a little beyond what players should be able to handle at their current level.

  The whole idea of endgame content was taking a bunch of players and throwing them at monsters they couldn’t possibly defeat on their own, but could very much defeat if they were all thrown at it at once. The same was true for these things, only Pig God+ was merely high level for this zone, and not in an endgame sense.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But you managed to pull the thing, so we might as well give it a shot.”

  Though that + by the thing’s name gave me pause. That meant it was an elite monster, and elite monsters were supposed to be tough. It was also a named monster, Pig God was definitely different from the usual Wild Boars we’d been going up against, and that meant it would be even more difficult still.

  I grinned. There was a time when I would’ve run from this thing in terror because I didn’t have any way to fight it, but I was starting to understand exactly what Treanna meant when she said a Healer was the ultimate pet class.

  I had two beautiful women tagging along willing to help me kill this thing, and with my heals and stuns it would probably be a hell of a lot easier than if we were all combat classes.

  “Yeah, let’s do this,” I said.

  “Glad to see you’re finally seeing the wisdom of why I had you choose this class,” Treanna said, doing a little barrel roll in front of me as she floated, inches tall, in front of me.

  “Yeah, well we’ll see how well we do against this thing,” I said.

  “Talking to your imaginary friend again?” Keli asked.

  “Something like that,” I said with a smile.

  “The spirit is far from imaginary,” Sefia said, hitting Treanna with a smile. “You should treat the spirits with more respect, lest bad things happen to you.”

  Keli eyed the boar and held out her hand, summoning a conjured sword that she held up as she readied one of her many battle mage powered attacks.

  She’d done away with the ranged attacks unless we were pulling. There was no need for anything like that when she had two healers backing her up and crowd control abilities. At least she hadn’t needed anything like that so far, but something told me this named elite was going to test us far more than the other boars we’d been going up against.

  “Time to forget about the imaginary friend and get to work,” Keli said, charging at the boar just as the mez broke and the thing looked at her with a fury that was downright terrifying.

  At least it was as terrifying as it could be when I knew this was all a game and it was happening in my head. We weren’t actually in danger of being killed by a giant Pig God, but it looked pretty fucking realistic.

  I stunned the thing and hit Keli with a heal over time as she swung her sword up and made contact with the thing’s head. Meanwhile Sefia was doing her best to aid in the battle by slamming the thing with holy energy.

  “Great work, mighty warrior,” Treanna said, crossing her arms in front of her and looking at me with a look that made it clear she wasn’t impressed with what I was doing even if I thought I was holding up pretty well.

  Sure Sefia wasn’t exactly meant for DPS, and our party felt just a little out of balance considering we were a little healer heavy, but whatever. I’d take a party that had too many healers over a party that had too many DPS any day of the week.

  “We’ve got this!” Keli shouted, her voice full of triumph as she brought her sword down again and slashed a giant cut along the side of the thing’s face. That chipped one of its tusks.

  And royally pissed it off.

  Pig God lowered its head and let out a shriek that was so loud it knocked all of us on our asses. Followed very shortly by another sound that had the virtual blood draining from my face.

  That was the sound of a lot of other pigs coming for us. Not Pig Gods, but still enough of them that we were going to seriously be in trouble very soon. Especially when there was a Pig God to help them out.

  “Run away!” I shouted, landing a mez on the Pig God that was interrupted almost immediately by Keli’s sword landing again. “Damn it, run before we’re overwhelmed!”

  I feared that it was already too late though.

  2

  Run Away

&nbs
p; “I really don’t like this part of combat!” Keli shouted, then she let off a couple of curses as Pig God hit her in the ass and she was knocked about ten feet forward.

  Talk about a hell of a hit!

  “At least you didn’t slam into a tree that time around!” I shouted.

  “Shut the fuck up!” she shouted right back at me.

  “That’s really encouraging them big boy,” Treanna said. “I’m sure you’d rather be sticking something of your own up that cute ass though, right?”

  I glared at her, but now wasn’t the time to be having that sort of conversation about what I may or may not want to do to Keli or her ass which, I had to admit, looked really fucking good in those tight robes.

  If Sefia had any thoughts about our current precarious situation then she was keeping them to herself. Which was probably a good idea, all things considered. She was conserving her breath, something that was manifested for me as a fatigue bar in my heads up display, and I couldn’t help but notice that every time I talked that fatigue bar depleted just a little faster.

  We were running a losing race. Pig God was right on our asses dealing out the kind of damage that could only come from a named elite boss, and meanwhile there was an army of its little piglets that were only small in comparison to the big guy following up behind and doing their best to really ruin our day.

  “Remind you of anything?” I asked Keli as I tried to land a stun on Pig God.

  Unfortunately that stun didn’t hit. I’d been lucky the first couple of times I landed crowd control spells on the fucker. Every try since had resulted in a failure, which led me to believe this thing was a lot tougher than I’d originally given it credit for.

  The fact that it could summon every fucking boar in the forest and use them to try and kill our asses was merely more proof that this was a creature that wasn’t to be fucked with.

  “Sefia!” I shouted, looking at my fatigue bar and knowing it was only a matter of time before we’d slow down and get zerged by these bastards. “Do you know anyplace around here where we could hide out for a little bit and get away from Pig God here?”

  She shook her head. Which I figured meant we were fucked, but then she surprised me.

  “There is a place, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea,” she shouted between breaths.

  Damn. Even when she was running for her life she managed to look good. She also managed to show off that she was in far better shape than either me or Keli. She had a few levels on us, but still.

  It’d be nice to be able to run without worrying about fatigue. If she managed to survive she could also come back and resurrect us.

  “I don’t care if it’s the home of an evil demilich,” I said. “If it gets us away from Pig God I’ll take it!”

  Now that I really thought about it, Evil Demilich sounded like it would make for a pretty interesting heavy metal band name. Not that I was interested in starting a band like that. It wasn’t in fashion with the people in the elevator, and it wasn’t like I had a chance of joining any of the dorm bands that popped up around the Academy anyway.

  “If you say so,” Sefia said, though there was something about her tone that warned me there was something very wrong about the place we were going.

  What the fuck ever. As long as it didn’t have a bunch of pigs chasing after us trying their best to kill us it had to be better than what we were facing down now.

  “This way!” Sefia shouted.

  A glance at the minimap I had overlaid in a corner of my heads up display told me we were heading towards a rocky area.

  “What, are these things like sandworms or something?” I asked. “They can’t attack people in rock?”

  “That’s not it,” Sefia said, carefully husbanding her words between breaths in an attempt to avoid using up too much of her stamina. “The pigs won’t follow where we’re going.”

  Again that sounded pretty ominous, but right now I’d take an amorphous ominous something over the sure death that was about to be visited on us by Pig God and his acolytes.

  “Faster!” I shouted.

  “You’ve really stuck your foot in it this time,” Treanna said. “Want to take bets on how long it’s going to take those pigs to devour you?”

  I glared at Treanna. I would’ve given her an even nastier gesture than a glare if I could spare the energy, but something told me the moment I started trying to flip off my AI companion would be the moment the game tripped me up and the last thing she’d see as I flipped her off was me falling flat on my face as I was trampled by the bloodthirsty pig stampede behind us.

  “Were you going to add anything helpful,” I gasped. “Or did you just show up to gloat about how much I’m screwing up?”

  “Mostly to gloat about how much you’re screwing up,” she said. “I think you already know the rules about whether or not I can help you in a situation like this, but you might want to watch your step.”

  I looked down just in time to see a tree branch sticking up out of the ground ready to knock me on my ass if I wasn’t more careful about watching where the hell I was going. I jumped over the thing.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Don’t mention it,” Treanna said. “Might want to be more careful about talking while you’re in the middle of running for your life in the future.”

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind,” I said, gasping with the exertion. I was starting to get a stitch in my side, which was a weird sensation. I’d never had any sort of pain from exerting myself before, and it felt weird to have it showing up in a video game.

  “Almost there!” Sefia said.

  That was a good fucking thing, because I was looking at my endurance bar, and it looked like I was about to hit the ground like a fat kid in gym class who’s just given the old rope climb their best shot and failed spectacularly.

  It didn’t help that I could hear the pig zerg behind me. It sounded like there were a lot of them, and every story I’d ever heard over the years about pigs being remorseless eating machines that destroyed everything in their path was coming back to me.

  I figured that couldn’t be a pleasant way to go. Especially in a video game where all the sensations of being eaten by a bunch of wild boars was going to be lovingly recreated.

  As though to drive that point home, something gouged me in the ass. I turned to see a couple of boars behind me, with more in the distance. Meanwhile my endurance was starting to flash, which I figured meant I was about at the end of the line.

  Literally. Fuck.

  3

  Crystalia

  I gave it one last burst of speed, but it did somewhere between jack and shit to actually propel me forward. I’d heard of people getting a second wind in the real world when they were at the end of their ability to run, but it would appear that in this game when the endurance bar was gone it was gone.

  It didn’t help that at that moment I tripped over something and went falling to the ground. Incidentally scraping myself in several unpleasant places as I went.

  It was like I’d landed on a bunch of knives. At the very least the ground was a lot more sharp and pointy than any forest floor had any business being.

  The fuck? Now the forest floor was attacking me too? As though the boars weren’t bad enough!

  Shit. The boars. I braced myself and waited for the moment when they’d start tearing into my ass, but that moment never came. I could still hear them squealing and tearing through the forest behind me, but they weren’t tearing through my precious flesh.

  I turned and gaped. The knives were crystals sticking out of the ground all around me. The boars stopped at the edge of the crystal field. They glared at me as though they wanted nothing more than to fuck my shit up, but they didn’t seem eager to get any closer to those crystals than they absolutely had to.

  A moment later Pig God came barreling through the forest as well. Only it was big enough that its momentum carried him forward even though it did that hilarious animal thing where its feet star
ted windmilling like it wanted to come to a stop but couldn’t.

  It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so damn serious.

  The moment it stepped over the crystals I figured I was fucked, so I hit the thing with a stun. Only something weird happened as I hit it with that stun. Several of the crystals around the thing glowed dangerously and let loose with massive blasts of energy that slammed into the giant pig and turned its underside into charred pork belly.

  Dubya. Tee. Eff.

  The boar slammed down into the crystals and came to a pretty quick halt. Momentum probably would’ve carried it pretty far, but having a bunch of crystal pokers sticking up out of the damned ground was enough to bring it more or less to a screeching halt.

  I looked at the crystals all around me. Wondered if I was on the verge of having my ass blasted out from under me as well. Sure it’s not like I was going to die permanently, but I really didn’t relish the thought of having to hoof it all the way back out here from town.

  Especially when I had a pretty good idea that Tommy aka Tomas was going to be waiting in town to fuck my shit up.

  Maybe I was in luck though. It didn’t seem like the crystals around me were in a vengeful mood. Well they weren’t in a vengeful mood for anything that wasn’t a pork product, at least.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and scrambled to my feet, looking at the damage.

  Huh. Now that was interesting. I’d never seen a giant chunk of my midsection hanging open revealing what I was pretty sure were a couple of critically important internal organs that definitely shouldn’t have been made external.